“He thinks, Gregory is all he should be. He is everything I have a right to hope for: his openness, his gentleness, the reserve and consideration with which he holds back his thoughts till he has framed them. He feels such tenderness for him he thinks he might cry”

“Over many years, researchers have found that “the more conditional the support [one receives], the lower one’s perceptions of overall worth as a person.”

“People who, as a rule, don’t think their value hinges on their performance are more likely to see failure as just a temporary setback, a problem to be solved. They also seem less likely to be anxious or depressed.”

“My friend Danny recently summarized what he’s learned from years of fatherhood: “Being right isn’t necessarily what matters.”

For the last few years I have been fascinated by the idea of personal culture. How people spend their time, how they create their ideas and content and how they represent themselves to a wider world.

My fascination centers on the idea that understanding yourself better helps you ground yourself; by understanding your own needs you become more empathic towards those of others. By doing this, you become less afraid, more courageous and hopeful.

Representing yourself to the world is a tricky business, you have to show your past, present and future, and much of it centers on how you express what you need. Not what you think or what you want but what you need as a person to grow and better understand yourself.

This has led me on a path of researching how people can express what they need. Two books I have found stand out as examples of this idea.

Nonviolent communication by Marshal Rosenberg and Unconditional parenting by Alphie Kohn. While these books on the surface seem to be dealing with very different subject matters they share a core idea of helping people express what they need and creating a vocabulary which is rarely taught. I hope you find the following set of quotes from these books as enlightening and as empowering as I did.

Empathy

“Former United Nations Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold once said, “The more faithfully you listen to the voice within you, the better you will hear what is happening outside.” – Marshal Rosenberg

“To focus on children’s needs, and to work with them to make sure their needs are met, constitutes a commitment to taking children seriously. It means treating them as people whose feelings and desires and questions matter.”- Alphie Kohn

“I’ve become convinced that praise is less a function of what kids need to hear than of what we need to say.”- Alphie Kohn

“When we are in contact with our feelings and needs, we humans no longer make good slaves and underlings.”- Marshal Rosenberg

Stating your needs

“There is a story of a man on all fours under a street lamp, searching for something. A policeman passing by asked what he was doing. “Looking for my car keys,” replied the man, who appeared slightly drunk. “Did you drop them here?” inquired the officer. “No,” answered the man, “I dropped them in the alley.” Seeing the policeman’s baffled expression, the man hastened to explain, “But the light is much better here.”- Marshal Rosenberg

“A bit of background may be appropriate here. In our culture’s workplaces, classrooms, and families, there are two basic strategies by which people with more power try to get people with less power to obey. One way is to punish noncompliance. The other is to reward compliance.”- Marshal Rosenberg

Communication

“Studies in labor-management negotiations demonstrate that the time required to reach conflict resolution is cut in half when each negotiator agrees, before responding, to accurately repeat what the previous speaker had said.”- Marshal Rosenberg

“Listen to what people are needing rather what they are thinking.”- Marshal Rosenberg

“When we listen for feelings and needs, we no longer see people as monsters.”- Marshal Rosenberg

Statistics are, by definition, static: ‘Things have to keep static if you’re going to count them’, argues David Boyle, fellow at the New Economics Foundation and author of The Tyranny of Numbers: ‘But real life isn’t still.’